Lost in Translation
by stereolightning
Summary: Lily would later remember her sixteenth birthday as a series of mysteries and mixed signals.


Like the proverbial frog boiled alive in the slowly heated pot of water, Lily had not noticed the subtle shift in mood during her customary Wednesday night study sessions in the library with Severus. But she noticed that he began to leave them early, with odder and paltrier excuses, until, by January of their fifth year, he didn't bother with excuses at all.

"Who are you meeting, again?" she said, not quite taking her eyes off of her Charms notes as he pushed in his high-backed chair and flung his bag over one hunched shoulder.

"Mulciber," he said, not looking at her, either.

"Right, well, enjoy yourself." She said this without raising her voice, but she felt a pang of something.

"Yeah. You mistranslated this," he said coolly, pointing to her scroll of homework, one ink-stained finger sliding across her line of vision. "It's _Sempra_, not _Semper_."

She frowned.

When she finally looked up, he was already a small, dark shape at the far end of the library, walking twitchily out the door.

He was right, though. _Sempra_. Roughly equivalent to the word "always."

She corrected her homework in silence and exited the library without further event, other than a narrowly missed encounter with Peeves, who was carrying what looked like an oversize blancmange and a trumpet.

She found Remus Lupin sitting cross-legged on the crimson common room sofa with his eyes closed. He might have been meditating.

"Good evening, Siddhartha," she said, sitting down next to him.

He smiled that particular Remus smile – half-boyish, half-ancient. "Good evening," he said without opening his eyes. He looked tired.

She popped her knuckles one by one and looked at a curious little scratch that ran from behind his ear to below his shirt collar.

"Question for you," she said.

His eyes flicked open. "Yes?"

"What do you do when your friend makes a new friend who's a horrible prick?"

"All my friends _are _horrible pricks," he said.

"Good point," she said, tilting her head to one side. "How do you cope?"

He considered this. "Not especially well, I suppose. But affection makes an idiot of me."

"Yeah. It's the same with me," she said. "God. It is so effing hard sometimes."

He raised one eyebrow with interest. "Who are we talking about?"

She sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder. "You're the only nice bloke I know," she said.

"I'm a lot less nice below the surface," he said cryptically. "By the way, happy birthday. It's tomorrow, isn't it?"

She laughed. "You're failing to convince me that you're not a nice bloke, Remus. You remembered my birthday."

He shrugged. "I pay a lot of attention to calendars," he said.

She pinched his arm. "That's got nothing to do with it."

"Ow."

"Sorry," she said.

"You should go out with James."

"James _Potter_? Why would I do that?"

"Because you're both relentlessly idealistic. And mildly abusive."

"Hey," she said, laughing despite herself. "I was trying to underscore my point. Which was that you're a lovely person. I'd rather go out with you, to be honest."

She felt his whole body tense.

"Sorry, did I say something wrong?" she asked.

He rubbed his eyes, looking even more tired than before. "No. You didn't. Anyway, I should go to bed."

"Alright." She shifted to one side as he stood up and collected his books. "Goodnight, Siddhartha."

"Goodnight, birthday witch."

She padded up to the girls' dormitories a few minutes later. The house elves had arranged her birthday presents in a neat pile at the foot of her bed. Petunia had sent a pair of clogs so ugly that Lily wondered if it was meant as a joke. A few of Lily's girlfriends had given her sweets and pop records. Lily nibbled on a square of Honeyduke's and changed into her pyjamas.

The next morning at breakfast, Severus stopped her in the entrance hall by the door.

"Here," he said, pressing a heavy second-hand book into her arms. "Didn't have time to wrap it."

She looked down at it. _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi. _

"This is your copy," she said.

He shook his head. "No. It's yours." He opened it to the first page, the margins of which were filled with his cramped, detailed notes and tiny drawings. He pushed it toward her again. "I made some corrections. And additions. It's much more useful now."

She flipped through the book. Every single page had been annotated. She frowned. "But this must have taken you ages."

He blinked at her.

"Thank you. You didn't have to," she said.

"Wouldn't have done it for anybody. But it's you."

She blushed. He held her gaze for far too long and with far too much intensity, like always. He looked so earnest right now, with his ridiculous hair and the funny way he did up the buttons on his robes. A paroxysm of affection gripped her. She squeezed him in a one-armed hug, still holding the book in her other hand.

"I don't know what to say," she said.

"Say you'll use it," he said.

"I will." As she let go of him, she noticed the knot of Slytherin boys that had accumulated a few yards away. One of them appraised her with his eyes in a way that made her uncomfortable. Severus nodded at them.

"I have to go," he said.

Then he joined his new friends and left the hall without a backward glance.

She opened the book to a random page, which turned out to be in the "S" section.

_703. Shrivelfig. _

_704. Snakewort. _

_705. Snare, Devil's. _

In the margin between two facing pages, almost hidden by the binding, he had written one word which was apparently unrelated to any of the surrounding text.

_Sempra._

Whether this was part of a homemade spell or had some other cryptic meaning, she was never sure.


End file.
